Thursday, 28 February 2013

Tour at 13:00 Report from Hafsúlan: We sailed out today in rainy weather from Reykjavík. The visabiliy was ok but not good enough to see the Reykjanes or Snæfellsnes Peninsula´s.  We sailed for a long time but we saw many species of seabird on the way. Eventually the captain told the guide that he saw White-beaked Dolphins. At first there only seemed to be 5-7 individuals and they were surfacing fast towards something and then suddenly we saw many more dolphins in the distance. All in all we must have seen at least 40-50 dolphins and they were incredible. We watched thempush a shoal of fish closer and closer together using breaching and leaping until suddenly the fish were so concentrated that the dolphins were just surfacing in one area and around the fish. We saw rolling, sharking and mayby other types of behaviours allowing them to optimise the amount of fish they could catch. Even the birds joined in. There were even very small dolphins only a couple of weeks old surfacing meters from the boat. The was like a David Attenbough documentry watching the dolphins feed. It was amazing.

Birds seen on todays tour included, Shags, Cormorants, Gannets, Kittiwakes, Glaucous Gulls, Black-backed Gulls, Long-tailed Ducks, Eider Ducks, Fulmars and some Iceland Gulls too.